Coffee Capsule Packing: ABB FlexPicker Robots

Coffee capsule packing is one of the fastest pick and place jobs in food manufacturing. A single line can fill and seal capsules faster than anyone can count them, and every one still has to be grouped, stacked into sleeves or boxes, cased and palletised without denting the foil. This post follows coffee capsule packing from the first single serve systems and Nespresso's 1986 launch, through the high speed filling machines that made billions of capsules possible, to the delta robots such as ABB's IRB 360 FlexPicker that sort and pack them today, and to the material changes now reshaping the lines.

Single serve Nespresso aluminium coffee capsules in different colours. Photo: Chepry / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How single serve coffee went from idea to production line

Folgers sold coffee singles in bags in 1953, and in 1958 the Belgian roaster Rombouts showed a pre filled one cup filter at the Brussels World Exhibition. These were drip products packed in paper. The capsule came later: in 1975 Nestlé employee Eric Favre noticed how busy one Rome coffee bar was, and the system he developed was patented by Nestlé in 1976. It sealed a measured dose of ground coffee in an aluminium capsule lined with food grade lacquer.

Soldiers fill and weigh sacks of ground coffee from gravity spouts at the 70th Quartermaster Coffee Plant in France, April 1945. Photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Nespresso tested the idea in Japan and launched in 1986 in Switzerland, France, Italy and Japan, starting out as a direct sales business before it opened its first boutique in Paris in 2000. Other formats followed: Lavazza's Espresso Point in 1983, the K-Cup in 1992, the paper Easy Serving Espresso pod standard in 1998, Senseo pods after 2001, Tassimo in 2004 and Dolce Gusto in 2008. When Nespresso's patents began expiring in 2012, compatible capsules from many makers flooded supermarket shelves.

K-Cup single serve pods from several coffee brands. Photo: Shoshanah / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Behind that growth sat dedicated filling machines. Nespresso roasts, grinds and encapsulates all its coffee in three Swiss factories at Avenches, Orbe and Romont, and by August 2010 more than 20 billion capsules had been sold since 2000. Filling machines dose coffee into rows of capsules, tamp it and seal the lids in one indexed motion. For years the packing that followed was the slow part. People or simple mechanical stackers grouped capsules into sleeves and boxes, and every new pack size meant new change parts. A box of ten capsules, a sleeve of forty and a mixed tasting pack each needed its own mechanical setup, so short runs of special flavours were expensive to pack.

Nespresso's production plant in Avenches, Switzerland, one of its three Swiss capsule factories. Photo: Adrian Parpan (Parpan05) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Delta robots, new materials and flexible packing lines

Delta robots took over much of that packing work. ABB's IRB 360 FlexPicker hangs over a conveyor and uses three light arms to pick small items at very high speed. With PickMaster software and a camera, it finds capsules wherever they lie on the belt, and conveyor tracking lets it pick them while the belt keeps moving. One robot can place capsules upright in a tray, while the next fills a carton with a mix of flavours. To change the pack pattern, an engineer edits the program instead of swapping mechanical change parts.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots picking items on a moving line. Photo: ABB

On 26 August 2026 Global Coffee Report covered how the Italian packaging machine maker Cama is responding to changing coffee packaging demands. Its sales manager Sergio Cornago described aluminium gradually replacing plastic in primary packaging, because other recyclable materials have not yet met performance needs, and coffee companies bringing more packing in house with more secondary formats. Cama's upgrade programme adds automatic format changeover, automatic carton loading and collaborative palletising, which all aim at the same problem: more pack formats on the same line with fewer stops.

Nespresso capsules sorted by colour in a Paris boutique, 2007. Photo: Nicolas Richoffer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Material choices keep moving. Swissinfo reported on 30 September 2026 that Nespresso is phasing out its home compostable paper capsules three and a half years after launch, citing limited shelf life and the product experience, and saying aluminium remains its preferred material. Every switch like this changes how capsules behave on a line: paper and plastic deform differently from aluminium, so grippers, vision settings and pick speeds have to be retuned. No source shows ABB robots on these particular lines, but FlexPicker and palletisers like the IRB 460 do exactly these jobs in food packing.

Nespresso's paper coffee capsules, made to be composted with organic waste. Photo: Reddalo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What comes next for capsule packing lines

On the factory side, the next step is lines that change format almost by themselves. Digital twins, which Cama also lists in its programme, let engineers try a new pack pattern in simulation before stopping production, the way ABB cells are planned in RobotStudio. Small cobots such as GoFa or SWIFTI can take over end of line jobs like loading carton blanks or building mixed pallets next to operators, and Flexley Mover AMRs can carry cases to the warehouse. Vision checks on every capsule, for dented rims or a missing lid, can run on the same cameras that guide the pick, so faulty capsules are removed before they reach a box.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer stacking boxed products at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

For homes, the changes are mostly in the capsule itself. Brands are testing paper, compostable and recyclable materials, and some retailers still sell compostable capsules even as Nespresso returns to aluminium. Each new material shifts work back to the packing line, where robots have to handle softer or more fragile capsules without crushing them. Gentler grippers, lower accelerations and new vision settings all cost some speed, and engineers have to win it back elsewhere on the line. For the café side of the same story, see our post on coffee barista automation, where the robots brew the coffee.

A capsule coffee machine on a kitchen counter beside a box of capsules. Photo: Shixart1985 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

A high speed delta robot cell with vision is a serious investment for a smaller roaster, and simple mechanical packers or manual packing can still make sense at low volumes. Fast robots need guarding, while cobots that work beside people must run slower and pass a risk assessment. Lines also need technicians who can tune vision, grippers and robot programs every time a brand changes its capsule or carton.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items into cartons at high speed. Photo: ABB

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